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Cloud: Hello! This is Cloud Christopher and welcome to another episode of The Vital Way podcast. Today, Zane and I are going to talk about the herbs. Sometimes people come to our website and they’re a bit overwhelmed with all the information and the different herbs on the site. So what Zane and I are going to discuss today is when a brand new person, brand new to herbs, never done them before and they come to the site, “Oh my gosh? What should you start with?” Right.

Zane: How you do get start with herbs? There are so many to choose from and our repertoire is getting bigger and bigger because there are so many good herbs.

Cloud: And we’re working on other ways, stuff to put on the website to make it a little bit easier to go through and kind of match up your needs or the benefits you’re looking for with the proper herbs. There’s a visual representation, kind of a guide through the herbs on the website and we’re working on that right now. Hopefully, we’ll have that up soon. But yeah, this podcast is definitely for new people that have never experienced the herbs and what they can do for you. Zane and I were discussing this a little before the podcast and we just thought we’d go into a little bit about our story of when we discovered the herbs, what we did because we knew nothing of the herbs.

Zane: I remember Logan took me to the Longevity Conference. I think I explained this in one of our first podcasts. I was blown away because there was all this crazy stuff I had never heard of before or if I had heard of it, I thought it was some hippy bullshit, to be fair. Even when Logan told me about getting into mushrooms and stuff, I thought he was just being a little weird. But once I was there and I started learning from all the speakers and stuff, I’m like maybe there is something to this. But I had no idea at all where to start because there are just like hundreds or thousands of different herbs. The first big one that I do remember though that I took was pine pollen. I’m not really sure. I can’t remember any herbs really before that. I know once I learned about that one that was definitely the one that I got on.

Cloud: Did you ever have it before I got it, the first time you were talking about?

Zane: Yeah.

Cloud: You did? Okay.

Zane: Well, I ordered it from Raw For Foods and I know I told you about it. You probably had it at a similar time.

Cloud: Right. I remember when you told me about it and I went to their website and like I’ve said before, I was always into working out and bodybuilding supplements my whole so trying a new supplement was nothing new to me. Going to their website back in the day, like I always do I do my own research and I started reading everything I could on their website about pine pollen. It was the first herb I chose. It seemed really good based off the information. It seemed almost too good to be true, that supplements could do all of this different stuff. Just like we are now, we always encourage people to do their own research. I don’t believe what someone is telling me just because they’re telling me it so I go do my own research on pine pollen and have come to find out what they’re saying, the rest of the internet is saying at least, so maybe it is true. Then we did place an order.

At that same time that I see pine pollen and oh my gosh, it’s going to do all this; this is really good so I picked that to start with. Then my next thing, what is this shilajit stuff I’ve never heard of? This one has a crazy name. What is this? And I started reading about the Destroyer of Weakness, the Conqueror of Mountains and oh my gosh, that one was again too good to be true.

Zane: That one, I definitely remember that being the next big one which is part of the reason why we chose these two to start out when we started this company. Those ones really stood out from other herbs. But everyone should know those weren’t the only two herbs. We were taking a lot of different herbs when we started out. Basically, everything you started reading, you’re like oh, it does this? I might as well give it a try and see what happens.

Cloud: In my first experience, I wasn’t taking a bunch of herbs at the time. I was changing the way I’d eat, the stuff, some of the things Logan had taught me. I was having green mix powders and taking like MSN in the morning and eating Frutal. I was doing a lot of super foods. You were talking about the Longevity Conference and that’s where we spend about a bunch of super foods.

Zane: I was going to say my diet changed, too. That’s actually when I started eating fermented foods a lot.

Cloud: In that whole timeframe, that’s when everything started to change for us. I think I was doing a bunch of super foods. Like you said, the Longevity Conference pretty much introduced us to all these super foods. We may have heard of a few of them before and maybe used them but I think that time was when especially you and I really started to pay attention to Logan. For me, doing that new stuff and then once I got the pine pollen and the shilajit and added that to my new diet, the results I got were incredible.

Zane: Yeah, it’s like the energy coming out of your ears.

Cloud: I was bouncing off the walls all the time, hardly eating. That’s when a lot of my first experience with macronutrients versus micronutrients came at that time. I could not believe how little I could eat and feel so good and perform so good.

Zane: That’s true. That’s when we were also doing a lot of. That’s when we were also doing a lot of MovNat and started doing parkour, too. We got in ridiculous shape.

Cloud: Yeah, at that time Zane and I were working out, doing Movement Natural, parkour. We came up with our own training system. We just called it playing. We would go out and play for hours at a time and it was like time traveling. Remember that time we worked out for like three hours and when we came back to the car we felt like it was only like half an hour or 45 minutes and you were late to class and stuff? It was so much fun. So we were doing all this really fun stuff we really liked. We started taking all these super foods and then we added in the pine pollen and shilajit and it was just crazy. Nothing had ever worked so well for us. Like Zane said, I got the most ripped I have ever been in my life practically without trying, it seems like.

Zane: I think all the mountain climbing helped with that one, too, which shilajit really helped with. We’re getting a little off-topic, a little bit. If somebody were to come up to us and ask us, “Well, where do I start? What’s going on?” a good example is the booth. When we are doing a little expo or a seminar or something and we’re trying to get this out there more, basically it’s just always like people will come up and ask us, “What is this stuff?” or they’ll just be looking at the table looking at stuff and I’m like do you want to try something? They’re like, can we you tell me what it is first? Because they don’t even know what it is. It makes sense. It’s not out there at all. So then at that point, that’s where you get that 10 to 15-minute spiel going because they want to know what everything is.

Cloud: Well, my whole point of the previous story is what you and I started on, which was pine pollen and shilajit. I don’t know if you’ll probably agree with me but I believe that nutrition is the keystone to good health. If you have proper nutrition, you’re not even going to need supplements.

Zane: That’s true.

Cloud: You’re not going to need to supplement your diet if your nutrition is proper and I know you’ve read some research and books where—what was that one book you read where the entire first part of it was every ailment you have is because you’re dehydrated? My point is the pine pollen and the shilajit where we started, I think those two are tremendously about nutrition and part of the reason they help so much in so many different ways is because of the nutrition they can provide a body.

Zane: I agree. Pine pollen has over 200 constituents—

Cloud: Or nutrients.

Zane: —nutrient parts to it so that in itself is why I would recommend it. That one I would always recommend first to anyone, probably more so than anything. It depends on the person. They have different goals and stuff but like a blanket statement, if you really want to get started on herbs, pine pollen is probably the number one bet because of the taste factor. A lot of people can’t get over the taste of some of the herbs and pine pollen, you get used to it really fast if you don’t like it in the beginning and you can throw it in shakes and stuff and totally mask the taste. So out of all of them just for that, that’s like something really important to consider when starting on the herbs because people actually do have to build up a tolerance to bitter food.

Cloud: When I talk to people, I find out their goals to see which herbs or products could help them reach those goals but after finding that out, my first statement is always well, I highly recommend everyone be on pine pollen powder as a base, an herbal base specifically for the nutrition. In my own opinion, I know it does do hormone stuff but I think a good majority of pine pollen’s benefits are derived from all the nutrition in it. That’s why I highly suggest to everyone to start there. The other thing why I suggest people start there is the price. Comparatively, pine pollen is a lot cheaper so you could get more of it, take more of it and receive more of the benefits. As we all know or maybe don’t know, pine pollen is more of a food from our own experience and the experience of all our customers. The more you ingest, the better everything seems to get.

Zane: Yeah, and that’s what I like to tell people at those booths. I consider them more of a food now than anything else. Like you were saying, you can do all this by eating food but eating supplement with herbs will just take you to another level above what that—

Cloud: Well technically, all these herbs are plant parts, right, and people eat plant parts all the time so a lot of these herbs you could just consider food anyway.

Zane: Yeah. Well, they’re whole foods. That’s a big thing, too. They’re whole. So the pine pollen, another thing for that is you could go out and collect that stuff if you wanted to. Most people would be too lazy and that’s why they buy so much but you certainly could go out in most areas or a lot of areas of the US and collect your own pine pollen and you’ll get a lot of nutrition from that. As I was going to say about the hormone thing, one of the reasons I like to tell people to get on pine pollen is because it will help start detoxing your body of excess estrogen, which is definitely a problem in our society.

Cloud: Yeah. After nutrition, that is my first benefit other than nutrition. It’s the estrogen detox because you cannot avoid estrogen-mimicking molecules or components in our current society. Literally, if you smell chemicals, you’re ingesting them, right? You go anywhere and I can smell chemicals and I don’t even have the best sense of smell. It’s everywhere.

Zane: That’s why I don’t like the new car smell anymore. I feel bad for me.

Cloud: Also gasoline and everything with the new car smell, if you don’t know is just another form of chemical anyway. So let’s say okay, someone, here we go, we have our first base of where we’re saying someone should start, pine pollen basically.

Zane: Yeah, for the most part.

Cloud: Where do you go from there? Well, our second our herb was shilajit in a powdered form. It was not in a pitch or resin form. It was shilajit powder and I remember the first version I ever had was probably still to me the best-tasting one I ever had. I could not get enough of the stuff. I loved it and I would highly again suggest that for pretty much everyone just because it has every mineral known to man and we all know we’re pretty mineral-deficient in these parts. It has the fulvic and humic acid which are in shilajit which we no longer get from our food. So again to me, shilajit is about nutrition.

Zane: That’s a good point. It’s funny because our soils are so depleted and like you said, we don’t have the humic acid that we get from the soil anymore because the top soil has been all destroyed. So shilajit you can kind of think of as like you’re getting soil. You’re eating soil basically. It’s very, very, it looks exactly like a rock when you hold it. You held it, right?

Cloud: Yeah, it’s pretty hard. If you were hiking and you walked by, you wouldn’t even know. It looks like any other rock.

Zane: You just think it’s a rock so it’s like you’re actually eating soil and soil helps totally. I’m convinced the quality of an ecosystem is felt, whether that ecosystem be a human being or every animal in the planet and fungus in the area, soil is the big determinant in that and shilajit is basically soil, a rock.

Cloud: Amazing.

Zane: That one’s a good one to suggest. I tell everyone that’s my favorite herb because of the physical power it’s giving me on any occasion but I would also, depending on the individual, maybe recommend they try a formula before they try the shilajit.

Cloud: Really? Which formula would you be leaning towards for that?

Zane: I think depending on the individual, I really actually like our Phoenix formula just because for a person that’s just beginning, it provides so much nutrition from the ant, pine pollen that’s in there and shilajit but then at the same time it’s also working on balancing out those hormones and bringing down your stress level.

Cloud: Yeah, I definitely like Phoenix. It’s a great general formula, like you’re saying, for basically anything you’re looking for. Do you want more energy? Do you want to recover better from a workout? Some people said it helps them sleep better, less cravings. A lot of these benefits can just be associated with just pine pollen or just shilajit. Remember, everyone’s a little different. What I do like about Phoenix, like you were saying, it has the pine pollen in it for the nutrition and the estrogen detox. It has the shilajit in it and makes sure you have all your minerals, the humic and fulvic acids. It’s go the ants in it which helps with energy and chi. I could just keep going. And then it’s got the he shou wu with all the SOD and again more just energy, lots of zinc, too.

I think what you’re saying, the Phoenix, our first formula which we did design as a very general formula is an excellent place for someone to start just whether they’re looking for better health, a little better exercise performance and like I said, you could take it before a workout. You could take it after a workout for recovery. You can just take it in the morning every single day. We have gotten reports from various people that basically all these different ways of taking it worked. All the four herbs in it definitely work synergistically together. Pine pollen helps with testosterone. The he shou wu provides zinc so you have enough testosterone. I can’t remember. We used to know exactly how all four herbs helped each other. I can’t remember all of them.

Zane: Shilajit helps you absorb them all.

Cloud: Oh yeah, shilajit helps to absorb all the nutrients because of the fulvic acid in it. It potentiates all the other nutritional components.

Zane: Well, pine pollen actually has a lot of zinc in it, too, which is funny. So pine pollen, he shou wu and the ant all have decent amounts of zinc, which is really good for guys.

Cloud: Oh yeah, but we’re forgetting the women because again Phoenix formula, all of those herbs again are great for women, too. We have a bunch of customers, women customers, athletes that are totally happy and love Phoenix formula for their training or just for their health benefits. Pine pollen and shilajit maybe and maybe Phoenix formula. I would say if someone’s a little more specific in what they’re looking for and/or we can tell stress is a factor in their life, maybe even some adrenal fatigue-like problems, where would you go next, Zane?

Zane: Well, definitely if they are also drinking coffee, I would always and like what you just said, I would definitely suggest the shilajit of course to balance out the whole cortisol hormonal issue but I would also recommend Spartan or both of them together.

Cloud: I didn’t know shilajit helps with cortisol. I hadn’t heard.

Zane: Well, it helps a lot. I know it helps actually to bring your circadian rhythm back in line with where it—

Cloud: The circadian rhythm, you were saying? Sorry, you broke up. I couldn’t tell. I want to make sure that’s what you were saying.

Zane: Yeah. That has to do with cortisol levels and all that.

Cloud: To my knowledge, the circadian rhythm is basically where you’re awake during the day and asleep at night.

Zane: Yeah, exactly. But that depends on cortisol levels a lot actually, that level. So if your cortisol levels are out of whack, you might find it really hard to go to sleep at night.

Cloud: Right. Well, it makes sense if you’re stressed out, right? If you’re stressed out and you’ve got high cortisol levels, maybe your mind’s racing at night because under all the stress. Yeah, it does make it hard to sleep, right?

Zane: Exactly. Shilajit has been shown to actually help people get that rhythm back where it should be and therefore, decreasing cortisol levels.

Cloud: Right. I love talking to Zane because he does so much research that I always learn something new about the herbs from him because he is always reading so much research, whatever.

Zane: That one actually came from an article I did on menopause. So for you ladies, I wrote loads of articles on herbs and menopause a long time ago but that’s where I learned about shilajit and the circadian rhythm. Shilajit and pine pollen for women, especially older women, it’s crazy exceptional how it will help your hormones out so definitely consider both of those

Cloud: And that’s funny, that’s our number one and two suggestion of where to start. Oh my gosh.

Zane: The reason that I said Spartan is stress. Basically, it’s the same thing, cortisol. There is no shilajit in Spartan though but taking those together—

Cloud: During my research, I found Spartan’s formula in a book. It was suggested as a formula for students and/or doctors, people that do all-nighters to help them adapt to it and perform better. So I made this formula up after I found it and it worked tremendously well right in the beginning. All the herbs in it, schisandra, Eleuthero, Rhodiola, cordyceps, are very well known adaptogenic herbs so they help you adapt to stress that’s placed on your body. Olympic teams have used some of these herbs or all of them to help their athletes perform better, most notably with the Chinese in the ’92 Olympics, using almost all of these herbs in this formula. Some people thought they were on roids just because they performed so much better. I don’t really remember if they were or not but I just remember the herbs being a big story back then about that.

Zane: I wonder if they’re allowed to use them now.

Cloud: Well, I’m doing a bunch of research on herbs and whether an athlete can pass the test if they’re taking the herbs. In my opinion, the herbs are food. They are plant parts, like I said. They’re kind of like vegetables, whatever. Are they going to ban athletes from eating salads? If they banned our stuff, I view that they would have to ban vegetables and fruits in general.

Zane: They’ll probably not.

Cloud: Probably not but they get to make the rules. Anyway, a little off-topic. Let’s say you know you’re under stress. You come to the website and you know you’re under stress. You sit at a cubicle all day. You hit that 2:00 or 3:00 drag and you’re dying. When you get off of work, you want to go home. You don’t want to do anything. I know plenty people have told me, “I need something for that afternoon,” “I want to work out. I know I need to work out. I have no energy, no drive once I get home from work.” Well, a lot of times all the stress in our daily lives leads to this adrenal fatigue, too much cortisol so what I love about Spartan is that it helps to realign the way your body deals with stress and your hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal complex. It helps realign it just so your body can deal with stress better, right Zane?

Zane: Yeah.

Cloud: And once your body can deal with stress better, things just seem to get easier.

Zane: Yeah, you can actually go to sleep before James.

Cloud: And I do have an athlete that’s serving in our Armed Forces. He was on sleep medication for a long time but still had problems sleeping. It’s on our website. He started taking the Spartan formula and he tells me, “I don’t need to take my sleep medication.” This has actually helped him get to sleep without meds for the first time in a very, very long time. He absolutely loves Spartan formula. I’m sure a lot of people would prefer to take something like Spartan formula that has just plants minimally processed by man versus taking medication which is an isolate made up.

Zane: They jack you up. Can’t handle that but—

Cloud: What do you think? Does Spartan formula have any side effects like the sleeping pill might?

Zane: The only thing I have noticed is—this is a personal thing but; a lot of people have their experiences—if I take a bunch of it like more than a tablespoon on an empty stomach, I start feeling nauseous but that can happen with a lot of herbs so you have to be careful about taking too many herbs, especially on an empty stomach.

Cloud: Yes, and I would say ashwagandha is one of those. I would be wary of taking that on an empty stomach. I’ve actually had times where I took in the early morning with nothing in my stomach, I took a bunch of herbs and I’m fine. Then I throw tongkat in my mouth and the bitterness of tongkat just pushes me over the edges and unfortunately, everything comes up.

Zane: How often does that happen?

Cloud: I think two or three times and it was always tongkat. I can tell when it’s coming because oh no, it doesn’t feel right. But you know what I do? I drive on right through it, drink some water and go take some more herbs. Well, back to the question, are there any side effects to the Spartan formula?

Zane: Contraindications. I have not heard of anyone having side effects.

Cloud: Right. When we say side effects, it’s different with herbs than let’s say prescription drugs. I just had someone ask me, “Are there any side effects?” and I told them some people may not react well. Everyone is different. The herbs react differently to anybody. But generally let’s say someone doesn’t agree with an herb, they just don’t feel well or it doesn’t feel like. It’s not like something serious where they take it and all of a sudden you go to the hospital. It’s not like getting the wrong drug type thing. It’s like I don’t feel good with this one. People tell us that and we’re like okay, stop taking that. Do the other herbs do anything? They’re like this one’s fine; I feel like this one’s great for me… So it’s not like the side effects are anything serious. It’s just like this one doesn’t agree with me so I’m going to move on from there

Zane: That’s the good thing about herbs compared to Western medication. It’s that they are that kind of mellow, like you’re generally not going to get side effects from herbs because they are mellow and that’s why they also take some a while before you’ll notice their effects, like a couple of weeks and stuff. They do have to build up in your system but they are a lot more mellow.

Cloud: Let me associate it. Basically like I said before, I consider these herbs to be food. Does all food agree with you all the time? No. I would love that. If nothing ever made me feel bad, that’s great. But do you go to the hospital just because my stomach doesn’t feel well; maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all that food.

Zane: Some people do.

Cloud: Well yeah, there’s always those kinds of people around. With the herbs being so like food, the downside to it is just oh, I don’t feel well. And again yes, there are exceptions to that rule but they’re few and far in between. I think that’s going to about wrap it up. It’s been almost 30 minutes. Just to recap here. You come to the side, right? You’re on the homepage and what is the formula you actually see when you scroll down the page? It’s Spartan formula. The next one is Phoenix formula. Then there’s Hercules and that’s more specific to working out but if you’ve read about it, you’d know that. Then there’s pine pollen. So on the homepage, shilajit is just under pine pollen.

So our number one would be start with pine pollen and go from there. I have even told a bunch of people to just get the pine pollen. It’s cheap. See how that goes for you. Then we’ll go from there. We can address your other goals or benefits needed after pine pollen and almost all the time I give out samples or whatever, I just let them try it and let the herbs speak for themselves, they try the pine pollen and they can’t believe how good they feel or whatever benefits they’re getting. Then they come back and say well, I’m looking for this; what would help me with this?

So again, pine pollen first. The shilajit is right under the pine pollen on the homepage and then you have the Phoenix, our most general formula, and the Spartan Stress formula right on the homepage. So our top four herbs to start with are pine pollen—

Zane: It’s almost like it was designed that way.

Cloud: Almost. Well, I think these are here—Logan does all our site design—because these are probably the top-sellers.

Zane: Popular. Yeah, I’m pretty sure and that’s not because we don’t push the other stuff but these are the best that we have discovered. Is there anything else you want to add?

Cloud: No. That was my recap. I think that about wraps the show. Are you getting pulled over, Zane?

Zane: No. The ambulance guy is checking me out. Not in that way.

Cloud: Okay, you wrap up your last thoughts and we’ll get out of here.

Zane: Well yes, starting out you’ve got to take it slow. The bitterness is going to be a huge factor in some of these herbs. I’ve definitely have had a lot of people not even want to try anymore because of the bitterness thing. So seriously if you really want to give something a try, we are always down to send out samples to people. But another thing is you just have to give it a try. It might sound weird but you’re not really going to know until you’ve tried it, how it’s going to work for you or anything like that so you’ve got to be kind of open-minded with this stuff, too.

Cloud: Yeah and we’ll talk about that on another podcast or I think Logan and I did on the last one. If you enter this world with a closed mind, that’s going to have an effect on your results so have an open mind and see where that can actually take you.

Zane: And I believe one of the benefits of these herbs is it actually helps you open your mind, ironically.

Cloud: Yeah, I would agree with you just based off of the friends you have gotten to take the herbs and I would say the dramatic turns some of their lives have taken and in my eyes, it was definitely for the better. They love the herbs and they still buy from us and I think that’s one of the most awesome things ever, even just a few friends that we have had that basically I think the herbs were the catalyst that started them down the journey they’re on now.

Zane: Yeah, they’re definitely more inward. It’s interesting. That’s a good point. All right, well I think that’s going to wrap it us for today. Thank you for joining us and listening to our random tirade talk.

Cloud: And we’ve kind of rambled on but I just want to say one thing. If you listened to this and you still don’t know where to go, call us, email us, whatever. We will help you get to where you’re trying to go as much as we possibly can.

Zane: Yeah, for sure. And ask for samples, too, because we’re trying to get that stuff out there and we need more people who will let other people know about this stuff.

Cloud: Okay, that’s it. We’re rambling way too much so let’s just end this, all right?